In many countries, the packaging of liquids, especially milk, in rectangular flexible pouches has been widely adopted. Since the pounches have very little inherent stiffness, they must either be emptied into other containers prior to use of the contents, or used in conjunction with special jugs which support the pouch during pouring. A typical example of such a jug is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,606,962 issued Sept. 21, 1971 to Scholle. These jugs are cheap to produce and fairly satisfactory in operation. In order to obtain reasonably effective pouring performance, the jug is dimensioned so that the pouch projects above the top of the jug, the front of which has no conventional spout, but is instead shaped to support the material of the pouch adjacent a top corner which is cut to form a pouring spout. The exposed upper portion of the pouch is untidy and inelegant in appearance, and is easily inadvertently squeezed during cutting of the corner, causing unwanted spurting of the liquid contained in the pouch.
Simply increasing the height of the walls of the jug does not solve the problem because it increases the difficulty of cutting the top corner, and results in liquid from the resulting spout pouring between the pouch and the jug. Adding a lid, which may be domed, to the jug, enables the pouch to be hidden without such a large increase in wall height as would otherwise be necessary, but any such lid must be easy to apply and remove yet reasonably secure during pouring, and it has proved very difficult to ensure that a top corner of the pouch is properly presented at a spout of the jug, both to facilitate opening and to ensure satisfactory pouring after opening.